The Genesis and Internal Dynamics of El Salvador's Ejército Revolucionario Popular

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The Genesis and Internal Dynamics of El

Salvador's People's Revolutionary Army, 1970
1976
ALBERTO MARTN LVAREZ and EUDALD CORTINA ORERO
Journal of Latin American Studies / Volume 46 / Issue 04 / November 2014, pp 663 - 689
DOI: 10.1017/S0022216X14001084, Published online: 30 July 2014
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0022216X14001084

How to cite this article:
ALBERTO MARTN LVAREZ and EUDALD CORTINA ORERO (2014). The
Genesis and Internal Dynamics of El Salvador's People's Revolutionary Army,
19701976. Journal of Latin American Studies, 46, pp 663-689 doi:10.1017/
S0022216X14001084
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doi:./SX First published online July
The Genesis and Internal Dynamics of

El Salvadors Peoples Revolutionary Army,
A L B E R TO M A R T N LVA R E Z and E U D A L D CO R T I N A O R E RO *
Abstract. Using interviews with former militants and previously unpublished

documents, this article traces the genesis and internal dynamics of the Ejrcito
Revolucionario del Pueblo (Peoples Revolutionary Army, ERP) in El Salvador during
the early years of its existence (). This period was marked by the inability
of the ERP to maintain internal coherence or any consensus on revolutionary strategy,
which led to a series of splits and internal ghts over control of the organisation.
The evidence marshalled in this case study sheds new light on the origins of the armed
Salvadorean Left and thus contributes to a wider understanding of the processes of
formation and internal dynamics of armed left-wing groups that emerged from the
s onwards in Latin America.
Keywords: political violence, El Salvador, insurgency, armed groups, ERP, FMLN
Introduction
The Ejrcito Revolucionario del Pueblo (Peoples Revolutionary Army, ERP)
was one of the most important political-military groups to form El Salvadors
Frente Farabundo Mart para la Liberacin Nacional (Farabundo Mart
National Liberation Front, FMLN) in . The ERPs genesis can be traced
back to certain social Christian-oriented groups of the university student
movement and, to a lesser degree, to the dissent within the youth group of
the Partido Comunista Salvadoreo (Communist Party of El Salvador, PCS)
in the late s.
Alberto Martn lvarez is professor at the Instituto de Investigaciones Dr Jos Mara Luis
Mora, Mexico City. Email: amartin@mora.edu.mx. Eudald Cortina Orero is a PhD
candidate at the Departamento de Historia Contempornea y de Amrica, Universidad de
Santiago de Compostela. Email: eudald.cortina@gmail.com.
* The authors wish to thank the four anonymous reviewers of the JLAS, whose excellent
comments have contributed greatly to the nal drafting of this article. We also want to
express our debt of gratitude to our informants, whose testimonies have made this work
possible.
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Alberto Martn lvarez and Eudald Cortina Orero
The main goal of this paper is to examine how the ERP was structured in
its early days and thus contribute to an understanding of its internal dynamics
during this rst stage (). The ERPs initial features strongly inuenced
its subsequent course until its demise as a political-military group in ,
as well as the path largely followed by the groups that sprang up from it and
by the Salvadorean revolutionary movement as a whole. The ERPs internal
dynamics were initially marked by the groups inability to remain a unied
entity, which was manifest in the rifts that took place from to . In
turn, the division of the ERP ended the contact it had had with the Fuerzas
Populares de Liberacin Farabundo Mart (Popular Liberation Forces, FPL)
since , which had sought to coordinate the actions of both groups. As a
result of all the above, the Salvadorean revolutionary movement was split until
, and this made it impossible to develop a unied strategy.
Although the literature on the Salvadorean revolutionary movement is
considerable, specic knowledge about how the guerrillas were originally
assembled namely, their emergence and development as small clandestine
urban organisations remains insucient. The same holds true for the
internal dynamics of Salvadorean revolutionary groups; to date, there are only
scattered data on this stage. In the particular case of the ERP, the history of
its founding years has been gathered together, to a certain degree, in the
memoirs published by some of its rst militants. By their very nature,
See, among others, Enrique Baloyra Herp, El Salvador en transicin (San Salvador: UCA
Editores, ); Hugh Byrne, El Salvadors Civil War: A Study of Revolution (Boulder, CO:
Lynne Rienner, ); James Dunkerley, The Long War: Dictatorship and Revolution in El
Salvador (London: Verso, ); Sara Gordon, Crisis poltica y guerra en El Salvador (Mexico
City: Siglo XXI, ); Ivon Grenier, The Emergence of Insurgency in El Salvador: Ideology
and Political Will (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, ); Aldo Lauria
Santiago and Leigh Binford, Landscapes of Struggle: Politics, Society and Community in El
Salvador (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, ); Mario Lungo, El Salvador
in the Eighties: Counterinsurgency and Revolution (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University
Press, ); Cynthia McClintock, Revolutionary Movements in Latin America: El Salvadors
FMLN and Perus Shining Path (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press,
); Tommie Sue Montgomery, Revolution in El Salvador: From Civil Strife to Civil Peace
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, ); Jenny Pearce, Promised Land: Peasant Rebellion in
Chalatenango El Salvador (London: Latin American Bureau, ); Timothy WickhamCrowley, Guerrillas and Revolution in Latin America: A Comparative Study of Insurgents and
Regimes Since (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, ); and Elisabeth J.
Wood, Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, ).
Arqumedes Antonio Caadas, Sueos y lgrimas de un guerrillero: un testimonio sobre el
conicto armado en El Salvador (San Salvador, ); Fermn Cienfuegos, Veredas de
audacia (San Salvador: Arcoiris, ); Carlos Rico Mira, En silencio tena que ser (San
Salvador: Universidad Francisco Gavidia, ); Eduardo Sancho, Crnicas entre los espejos
(San Salvador: Universidad Francisco Gavidia, ). Some recent works by academics
contribute valuable information, although their aim was not to analyse either the ERPs
formation process or its internal dynamics. See, for instance, Joaqun M. Chvez,
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The Genesis and Internal Dynamics of El Salvadors ERP
however, these materials were written not with the goal of creating a history
of the organisation, but rather with the aim of portraying the authors
experiences. Likewise, there is no intent to analyse the ERPs internal dynamics; therefore, references to internal conicts are often episodic, loosely
connected and subjective.
This paper is a contribution to the available knowledge on the ERPs origins
and early internal dynamics and thus broadens the evidence on the formation
processes of Latin American revolutionary New Left organisations. It draws
on in-depth interviews conducted with former ERP militants who came
from each of the various collectives that made up the organisation in .
As far as possible, information from the interviews was triangulated by asking
several of the interviewees the same key questions. Other sources were a
series of internal ERP documents drafted between and , found at
San Salvadors Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen (Museum of Word and
Image, MUPI), Fabio Castillo Figueroas personal archive and the Centro
de Informacin, Documentacin y Apoyo a la Investigacin (Centre for
Information, Documentation and Research Support, CIDAI) of the
Universidad Centroamericana (Central American University, UCA). To
date, they are unpublished in academic research on the ERP.
El Salvadors Political Context in the Late s
The organisational antecedents of the ERP can be found in a short-lived
entity, El Grupo (The Group), whose origins can be traced back to the
radicalisation process that a signicant sector of the Catholic-oriented
university student movement went through in the late s. These radicalised
young Catholics, represented mainly by students who were a part of Accin
Catlica Universitaria Salvadorea (Salvadorean Catholic University Action,
ACUS) and the Movimiento Estudiantil Social Cristiano (Social Christian
Student Movement, MESC), gradually began to move away from the idea of
social and political reform, which both organisations advocated, until nally
opting for a denitive split with electoral politics. This rift occurred due to the
evident limits that the authoritarian regime imposed on the participation
The Pedagogy of Revolution: Popular Intellectuals and the Origins of the Salvadoran
Insurgency, , unpubl. PhD diss., New York University, ; Dirk Kruijt,
Guerrillas: War and Peace in Central America (London: Zed Books, ); and Alberto
Martn lvarez, From Revolutionary War to Democratic Revolution: The Farabundo Mart
National Liberation Front (FMLN) in El Salvador (Berlin: Berghof Conict Research,
). There is also a recent journalistic work about the birth of the ERP: Geovani Galeas,
Hroes bajo sospecha: el lado oscuro de la guerra salvadorea (San Salvador: Athena, ).
The author hardly mentions his sources of information, however, so the books utility as a
source for historical knowledge on the Salvadorean revolutionary Left is quite limited.
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of the electoral opposition embodied in the Partido Demcrata Cristiano

(Christian Democratic Party, PDC) and also, in general, to a democratisation of the political system. To better understand the ERPs genesis, it is
necessary to briey outline El Salvadors political context in the late s.
From onwards, the military regime headed by Lieutenant-Colonel
Julio Adalberto Rivera () issued a series of modernising measures. The
main goal of the regimes relative opening-up was to re-establish the states
support bases, which had been eroded by the economic crisis, the repression of
workers protests in , and the winds of change unleashed by the success of
the Cuban revolution. To the domestic pressure caused by the implementing
of reforms was added international pressure, in particular that exerted by the
Kennedy administration within the Alliance for Progress strategy, which made
US aid conditional on the Salvadorean government holding more competitive
elections, among other measures. In response to this pressure, the Rivera
administration enacted a number of reforms, the most notable being those
geared towards providing areas for free expression to various organised social
sectors namely, workers and employees, the educational sector and the
Catholic Church. In particular, a new labour code allowed public employees to
unionise, gave urban workers the right to strike and provided the means for
collective conict resolution. The Rivera administration also passed a rural
minimum wage law in and promoted housing projects. In an attempt to
broaden the political regimes support bases in rural areas, the government also
encouraged the organisation of agrarian cooperatives. Moreover, during this
period the state earmarked considerable resources for higher education, which,
coupled with demographic changes, resulted in a per cent increase in
higher education students from to . The University of El Salvador
(UES) saw its budget quadruple between and ; its infrastructure
grew, and it opened the Santa Ana and San Miguel campuses in and
respectively.
Dierent social sectors capitalised on these regime openings to acquire an
organisational structure and to legally exert pressure in relation to their
demands. Thus, several independent union federations were created between
and , such as the Federacin Unitaria Sindical Salvadorea (Unitary
Federation of Salvadorean Unions, FUSS) and the Federacin de Sindicatos
de Trabajadores de la Industria del Alimento, Vestido, Textil, Similares y
Conexos de El Salvador (Trade Union Federation of Food, Garment, Textile
and Related Workers of El Salvador, FESTIAVTSCES), as well as several
Stephen Webre, Jos Napolen Duarte and the Christian Democratic Party in Salvadoran
Politics, (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana University Press, ), p. .
Wickham-Crowley, Guerrillas and Revolution in Latin America, p. .
The countrys rst private university, the Jesuit UCA, was created in .
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public employee unions, such as the Asociacin Nacional de Educadores

Salvadoreos de Junio ( June National Association of Salvadorean
Educators, ANDES-). Numerous student associations were also created,
such as the MESC, mentioned above, and the Asociacin de Estudiantes de
Secundaria (Secondary Education Students Association, AES).
In , the Rivera administration implemented a reform to elect
Legislative Assembly representatives through a mechanism of proportional
representation. It aimed to increase the legitimacy of the political system by
giving the opposition controlled spaces of representation, given that they
had threatened to boycott the elections if said reform were not implemented.
This allowed the PDC, then the leading oppositional party, to acquire seats
in the Legislative Assembly and mayoralties, including that of the capital
city, San Salvador. In addition, the Partido de Accin Renovadora (Renewal
Action Party, PAR), an old label appropriated by Salvadorean Communist
Party militants, gained access to the Assembly, as did the social democratic
Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario (National Revolutionary Movement,
MNR) at a later date, in .
Social Christian university students embraced the PDCs electoral progress
with enthusiasm. In , MESC activists supported Napolen Duartes
candidacy for mayor of San Salvador. As mayor, Duarte implemented a social
reform project through supporting marginal sectors, the grassroots promotion formulated by the Belgian Jesuit and sociologist Roger Vekemans and
to which numerous MESC and ACUS activists personally committed
themselves. The dream of revolution in freedom, of a profound transformation of Salvadorean society without it being necessary to go through a phase
of bloodshed, seemed possible to the social Christian university students of
the time. Their rst project was a policy of radical change, which is why we
adopted the denition of revolution the idea of revolution in freedom was
sometimes spoken of as a revolution of diversity, of change, of democratisation, of an opening towards the grassroots and, in some cases, of a struggle
against bureaucratised or politicised structures.
Since the mid-s, many of these activists had been in contact with the
Latin American Catholic Left through the training programmes organised by
the Christian Democratic Party in Santiago, Chile. These trips exposed some
For a more in-depth analysis of how the social organisations formed, see Paul D. Almeida,
Waves of Protest: Popular Struggle in El Salvador, (Minneapolis, MN: University
Webre, Jos Napolen Duarte, p. .

of Minnesota Press, ).
Webre, Jos Napoleon Duarte, p. . The PDC was founded in .
Interview with Dr Jorge Cceres Prendes, MESC founding member and former leader of the
Federacin de Estudiantes Universitarios Social Cristianos (Federation of Social Christian
University Students, FRUSC), San Salvador, Feb. .
Among others, Lil Milagro Ramrez, Rubn Zamora and Jorge Cceres Prendes took part in
these.
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young Salvadorean social Christian leaders to the latest trends in Catholic

reformist thought, and this, as well as their interaction with El Salvadors
evolving political context, led many student activists to alter their political
approach. Their starting point had been a developmentalist and democratising
way of thinking centred on the demilitarisation of society. Following this
shift, they became more interested in creating spaces for decision-making
that diverged from the structures of liberal democracy and facilitated the
self-management of various types of collective: unions, eld workers co-ops,
and associations. These approaches were in line with the commitment to the
poverty-stricken and the downtrodden preached by liberation theologists,
the Medelln Conference and the Second Vatican Council. In the Salvadorean
political context of the s, this inevitably meant a clash with the traditional
power structures; and it was in taking on these practices namely, autonomous
organisation and the fostering of grassroots activism that social Christian
youth came up against the limits of bloodless revolution.
Several events contributed to this rst and foremost, the repression of the
major worker and teacher strikes in and , which were a direct
response to the growing ination and unemployment that aected El Salvador
as a result of the lowering of international prices of export agricultural
products in and . Urban bus drivers (in January ), employees at
the IUSA factory and ASEO Publico (in February ), and ACERO factory
workers in the city of Zacatecoluca (in April ) went on strike to demand
a wage increase. The strike by the ACERO factory turned into a progressive
general strike, which was joined by thousands of workers organised by FUSS.
FUSS also brought in the Asociacin General de Estudiantes Universitarios
(General Association of University Students, AGEUS) and even the progovernment Confederacin General de Sindicatos (General Confederation of
Trade Unions, CGS) in solidarity. In October , the rst great ANDES-
mobilisation also took place. It lasted throughout and, thanks to FUSS
support, led to an important strike that other sectors progressively joined.
As Erik Ching notes, the labour conict spread beyond the educational
sector and unleashed a repressive response from the state. This included
the assassination of two labourers, FUSS members Oscar Gilberto Martnez
and Sal Santiago Contreras, as well as the arrest of hundreds of people, a great
number of whom were students aliated to AGEUS who had joined the strike
in solidarity with the educators.
To all this must be added the impact that other elements of the
authoritarian political context had on the radicalisation of young university
Erik Ching, Local Politics Meets a National Modernisation Project: How Teachers
Responded to the Educational Reform in El Salvador, paper presented at the
Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Montreal, Canada, Sep. , p. .
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students of Christian orientation, such as the banning of the unionisation of

rural workers; the persecution of Catholic Church base activists many of
whom were secondary or university students aliated to ACUS or Juventud
Estudiantil Catlica (Catholic Student Youth, JEC) carrying out literacy
endeavours among rural workers; and, last but not least, the regimes
refusal to enact any agrarian reform that would really go against the interests of
the large agricultural landowners.
Social Christian youths growing awareness of the narrow boundaries set
by the regime for any kind of political participation that could eventually lead
to a structural transformation in Salvadorean society was heightened by their
disappointment with the role that the Democratic Christian Party could play
in this context, given that until then it had seemed to champion their desire
for change. The support that the PDC oered the government during
El Salvadors war with Honduras in , along with its drubbing in the
municipal elections of , contributed to a perception that the PDC was in
fact playing along with the dictatorship and that the Christian Democratic
green revolution reformist strategy was going nowhere. All these factors led
some young social Christian activists to conclude that El Salvadors problems
could only be solved through armed struggle and socialism.
The example set by some Latin American priests who had joined
the guerrillas most famously, Colombias Camilo Torres, assassinated in
February resonated all the more because the conditions for violencefree structural change seemed to be all but absent in El Salvador. And last of
all, the international context played a part, in particular the wave of student
mobilisations taking place in Europe, Mexico and the United States, of which
Salvadorean university students were well aware. Commenting on this, Jorge
Cceres Prendes, one of the Salvadorean social Christian student movement
leaders of the late s, stated: I place a lot of importance on this external
inuence because we are undoubtedly talking about the years in which the
world was convulsed, with and all that, and this aected us a lot.
The Birth of El Grupo
It was in this context that a core of social Christian students created a rst
collective, called El Grupo by the Salvadorean press, which was oriented
towards the practice of armed struggle. It came into being in late with
Tangible proof of this is presented in Joaqun Villalobos narrative of the death threats
that he and Rafael Arce Zablah received from the National Guard when they were carrying
out literacy activities among rural workers in the municipality of San Juan Opico (La
Libertad department) under Father Alfonso Navarros direction. See Joaqun Villalobos,
Homenaje a Rafael Arce Zablah, El Diario de Hoy, Sep. .
Interview with Dr Jorge Cceres Prendes, Feb. .
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young university students who were activists in student organisations linked

to the PDC and to Catholic youth organisations. In essence, the birth of the
ERP can be traced to this grouping.
One of the key gures in bringing together the rst core group was Edgar
Alejandro Rivas Mira. A brilliant high-school student and social Christian
activist, Rivas Mira was awarded a scholarship to carry out undergraduate
studies in chemistry () at Tbingen University in West Germany.
While there, he came into contact with extreme left-wing student activists,
precisely at a time when student protests against the Vietnam War and the
great coalition government, and for the democratisation of universities, were
reaching their peak. Various testimonies indicate that his interactions with the
West German student movement contributed to his political radicalisation.
In Germany he made the necessary contacts to enter Czechoslovakia and then
Cuba, where he received training in urban guerrilla techniques and made
connections with some Latin American guerrilla leaders, in particular with
Venezuelan and Guatemalan activists. On his return to El Salvador in ,
Rivas Mira contacted some friends and some MESC student activists with the
intention of creating an armed group. To this end, he organised clandestine
gatherings at the University of El Salvador during which, alongside discussions
about the countrys problems, the issue of armed struggle was raised. Rivas
Mira greatly contributed to creating the collective identity of this rst
grouping by incorporating elements of the political culture of the European
New Left, in particular an admiration for Maoist China and a rejection of the
Soviet Union and the strategy of communist parties. Likewise, given the
training he had received, he was able to take on a key role in designing the
organisational structure and strategy of the edgling organisation. Also, the
fact that he had been in Cuba and had kept in touch with international
revolutionaries gave him a strong reputation as someone who possessed the
required know-how to captain a revolutionary organisation. He thus earned
the admiration of his peers and the legitimacy necessary to become the
organisations almost undisputed leader in its early years. Ana Sonia Medina,
who was to become a member of the ERPs national leadership in the late
s, noted of Rivas Mira:
He played a very important role in that the ERP did not become an organisation like
the others, dogmatic, book-spouting, that wanted to adapt reality to dogma or to
Interview with anonymous informant, Mexico City, April .

Interview with Eduardo Sancho, former member of the leadership of the ERP and the
Fuerzas Armadas de la Resistencia Nacional (Armed Forces of National Resistance, FARN),
and of the FMLNs general command, San Salvador, Jan. .
The ERP went public for the rst time wielding a slogan coined by Mao Tse-Tung: Power
grows out of the barrel of a gun. ERP, Communiqu No. , March , MUPI archive, San
Salvador, copy in the authors possession.
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theory and with all that stu on Mao Tse-Tungs Chinese thought I think that
actually he was valuable, not because at the end of the day we understood him or not,
but because really he made it possible for us to have a critical and irreverent stance
on the Cubans, the Soviets Why were we pro-China? If someone had asked us
we wouldnt have known it at the time perhaps it was because Sebastin said so.
Some of the activists contacted by Rivas Mira, such as Eduardo Sancho and
Lil Milagro Ramrez, also became important members of the new organisation.
Eduardo Sancho and Rivas Mira had been friends since before the latters
departure to West Germany. Sancho and other young people, such as the
poet Alfonso Hernndez and Carlos Eduardo Rico Mira, cousin to Edgar
Alejandro Rivas Mira, had taken part in the student movements solidarity
actions with the ACERO factory worker strike. This group of young
people had been in touch with the Communist Partys Vanguardia de la
Juventud Salvadorea (Salvadorean Youth Vanguard, VJS), were fans of the
Cuban Revolution and Che Guevara and, though lacking the necessary knowhow, were thinking about creating an armed group of their own. Besides
attracting those in his literary circle to the armed struggle, Eduardo Sancho
used his contacts with young VJS activists to recruit them into the organisation later on. Lil Milagro Ramrez, at that time a young law student at the
UES, met Alejandro Rivas Mira in through the latters brother, one of
the leaders of the MESC, which was a university youth organisation of the
PDC. Ramrez, given her friendship with some of its leaders, had been
working with the MESC since . She became a radical at the university
through a process in which her relationship to her peers, and in particular to
her MESC colleagues, became more important to her by far than the rest of
her social networks. Ramrez was actively involved in the ANDES-
teacher strike and witnessed the repression enforced by the regime, as she
wrote to her father when she decided to go underground in late :
Do you remember we were there during the rst ANDES strike? I was one of the most
committed to that struggle and my feelings of frustration and impotence began to take
shape when I saw the helpless people who were asking for justice and got repression
and death in response. I will never forget the mourning when we took the dead bodies
Interview with Ana Sonia Medina, former member of the ERPs political committee,
San Salvador, Jan. . Sebastin was Edgar Alejandro Rivas Miras alias.
Interview with Eduardo Sancho, Jan. .
Sancho belonged to the avant-garde literary collective La Masacuata, based in San Vicente.
All its members ended up joining one or another of the guerrilla organisations in the early
s. Sancho joined the ERP together with Alfonso Hernndez (alias Arturo or Gonzalo),
Luis Felipe Minhero (alias Toms), Salvador Silis (alias Santiago) and Carlos Eduardo Rico
Mira (alias Pancho). The new Salvadorean intellectual Left of the late s played an
important role in denouncing the military dictatorship, supporting the grassroots movement
and promoting armed struggle. La Masacuata is the perfect example of this, though not the
only one: a poets association working together on the publishing of The Purple Onion, in
which Lil Milagro Ramrez and Alfonso Hernndez were involved, is a similar case.
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of the workers killed by the Guard to the cemetery those were the rst times that
I reected on this country and its political conditions at that point I thought we
had to nd another way
The rest of El Grupos rst members or collaborators were Christian

Democrat activists, many of them leaders within the Juventud Demcrata
Cristiana (Christian Democratic Youth, JDC), or were aliated with
Catholic student organisations. Two of them stand out: Carlos Alberto
Menjvar, an ACUS member, and Ricardo Sol, a prominent ACUS member
and at that time editor of its ocial publication. He and his wife Luisa
Castillo were founding members of the new organisation. At least three
other people joined this rst group: Ricardo Sols father-in-law; Fabio Castillo
Figueroa, former rector of the University of El Salvador, who had been
calling for the creation of an armed organisation since the mid-s and
had facilitated the military training of some workers and university activists
in Cuba; and lastly, a former VJS militant, Salvador Montoya.
Some of El Grupos activists were responsible for the rst and only
action undertaken by the organisation: the kidnapping of a well-known
representative of the Salvadorean economic elite, Ernesto Regalado Dueas,
carried out with the aid of Guatemalas Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes (Rebel
Armed Forces, FAR), through one of their cells. Following this chaotic
event, which resulted in the hostages death, El Grupo fell apart and some of
its members went into exile.
The Comandos Organizadores del Pueblo
The organisation was almost immediately reconstituted as the ERP.
It revolved around Alejandro Rivas Mira, Eduardo Sancho and Lil Milagro
Ramrez, the core members who led the new grouping from late onwards.
They rapidly recruited young Catholic activists from the university student
movement. Among them stand out a small collective of students who, since
, had been attempting to create an armed organisation they had
Carta de Lil Milagro Ramrez en la que explica las razones de clandestinizarse, Diario
Interview with Eduardo Sancho, Jan. .

Colatino, July .
During the early s the ERP and FAR maintained close cooperation and mutual support.
The FAR kept up a strong presence in El Salvador at that time, most prominently at the
UES.
Police identied the kidnappers by tapping their phone communications. After arrest
warrants were issued, several of them were forced to go underground or leave the country.
Several social Christian young people associated with El Grupo who supported the core
members were arrested and tortured.
The rst time the organisation used this name publicly was in its Communiqu No. , in
which it called for an armed action that was undertaken on March at San Salvadors
Bloom Hospital.
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termed the Comandos Organizadores del Pueblo (Peoples Organising

Commandos, COP).
The relationships between the COP members had been forged while at
university, and in some cases dated back to friendships made in Catholic
youth organisations such as the JEC. Practically all of them had enrolled at
the UES in and , were or years old younger than El Grupos
members at the time of its founding and had become politicised by taking
part in a student conict known at the university as the Core Curriculum
strike, which had taken place from January to March . This dispute,
which stemmed from a group of physics students discontent with their poor
academic results, rapidly escalated into a widespread protest by students from
all the faculties against an educational model created during Fabio Castillo
Figueroas term as rector (). This model was based on the idea of giving
all university students a common grounding in the humanities, and thus the
curriculum set out a corpus of social and humanistic studies for the rst- and
second-year undergraduate students. Rafael Velsquez notes that students in
these two years wanted the university to take a much more leading role on
social issues, but also wanted changes to be made to the universitys undergraduate curriculum design. So that sparked an exchange of opinions among
the young people and then it started to move, it was very spontaneous.
Furthermore, the protest questioned the entire UES authority structure, as
students demanded that lecturers be red and that various deans, as well as the
rector himself, hand in their resignations. Little more than a week after
the conict had started, the group of students that began to take control of
the protest organised the Comit de Representantes de reas Comunes
(Committee of Core Curriculum Representatives, CRAC), which headed the
movement for its duration, and which, among other things, drew up a list of
the teaching sta that were to be purged as they were reactionary and hostile
to the university students. As Rafael Velsquez notes:
This movement was made up of very rebellious people who started to think that the
Committee of Core Curriculum Representatives should play a leading role in that
struggle. I mean, it was impressive to see classes democratically elect their leaders, their
representatives; it was impressive, all the rst- and second-year students became
involved in the issue but during that period before the strike, for example,
communes were created in the Physics Department, in the style of the Paris
Commune. They socialised everything knowledge, assessment and everything that
went on there could be called pre-revolutionary.
Despite the evident dierences, there are signicant similarities between this
conict and the and May student strikes in West Berlin and France
Interview with Rafael Velsquez, former member of the ERPS political committee,
Ibid.
San Salvador, Feb. .
IP address: 202.41.10.21
respectively. In fact, the Core Curriculum strike was to a large extent a delayed
response to that worldwide wave of student mobilisations. Salvadorean
students who enrolled at the UES in and were heavily inuenced by
the anti-hierarchical and anti-authoritarian values of the New Left worldwide:
The group of young people who had just enrolled were certainly inuenced by what
had happened for instance in the Cuban Revolution, by Ches actions, by the events of
Paris in , because that year was very rich in international developments that
heavily inuenced the thinking of the young people of that time, and this also
happened with Mexicos Plaza de Tlatelolco
Some key CRAC members were Manuel Rivera, Francisco Jovel, Carlos Arias,
Humberto Mendoza, Virginia and Felipe Pea Mendoza, Jorge Gonzlez,
Rafael Arce Zablah, Clara Elisabeth Ramrez, Alejandro Solano, Joaqun
Villalobos and Rafael Velsquez. Many of these leaders had attended private
Catholic schools, and as secondary school students had actively taken part in
Catholic youth organisations through which they had been inuenced by the
ideas of liberation theology, and thus become involved in working with
marginal communities.
Jorge Gonzlez, Carlos Solrzano, Rafael Arce Zablah and Joaqun
Villalobos were the prime movers of the COP in and . In this rst
period, this collective had a stable core of only three or four militants, and
other activists sporadically joined them. The latter did so either because of a
previously existing friendship (as was the case with Villalobos and Arce
Zablah), or because of the relationships they had forged as rst-year undergraduates. Most of them had attended private Catholic schools before enrolling
at the UES, and were middle or upper middle class. Rafael Arce Zablah was the
ideological leader and led the groups political education process. Ana Sonia
Medina, a COP member, said of those early days: There were very few of us
we all worked at the university, we were instructors in the rst cell, there
were six of us at rst, then three left and three of us remained Lito [Rafael
Arce Zablah], Joaqun [Villalobos] and Rodrigo [Jorge Gonzlez], they were
the leaders others left and a very, very small core remained.
This core group began to work together with the ERP at the latters request,
but on the condition that they remain an independent structure: The people
at the ERP told us they were going to support us, give us solidarity, and we set
as a condition that we were not going to become a part of them and there
we were, at Lil Milagro Ramrezs home.
By mid-, Rivas Mira had requested that the COP members join the
ERP once and for all: There was a whole discussion during which Sebastins
Interview with Rafael Velsquez, San Salvador, Oct. .

Interview with Rafael Velsquez, San Salvador, Feb. .
Interview with Ana Sonia Medina, San Salvador, Jan. .
Ibid.
IP address: 202.41.10.21
[Alejandro Rivas Miras] supposedly militarist position shifted, and

they proposed integration and not a simple takeover. They proposed that
one of us join the leadership a vote was cast and Joaqun Villalobos was
elected.
The COP members decided to join the ERP once the latter had ocially
adopted the strategic approach of grassroots resistance as its political line for
the masses. The lack of support in the country for Colonel Benjamn Mejas
March coup, which sought to make the government respect the electoral
results favouring the opposition coalition, made the ERPs leadership reect
on the need to organise and mobilise the people in support of the guerrillas.
The grassroots resistance strategy was intended as an answer to this problem.
A May COP document states the previous dierences between the ERPs
political approach and that of the Commandos, which would have prevented
both groups from coming together. From March onwards, when both
groups began a more formal rapprochement, the ERP remained rm on the
creation of an armed group as its main goal, while COP members considered
it essential to organise the masses at the same time. The other bone of
contention lay in decision-making: while the ERP leadership insisted on the
need for democratic centralism, the COP was in favour of a more assemblylike form of decision-making that it termed horizontal dispersion. When
the resistance strategy was adopted, the COPs reasons for not fully joining the
ERP vanished. From mid- the COP ocially became a part of the latter
organisation, but its members were subsumed as a specic structure, so that at
least at the beginning, their cells were not dismantled.
The student residence scholarship holders
A second UES student grouping had been attempting to organise an
armed group since mid-. They were closely linked to the COP, as they
had played a major leading role in the Core Curriculum strike, although they
had a dynamic of their own. Most, but not all, of this groups members
were scholarship holders living in the UES halls of residence. Key members
were Francisco Jovel, Ricardo Adn Daz Salazar, Gilberto Orellana, Francisco
Montes, Carlos Eduardo Rico Mira, Alfonso Hernndez and Joaqun Morales
Chvez, among others. In the words of Francisco Jovel: We started out as a
group of maybe seven people who came together when I decided to organise
a study circle at the student residence we had already created it with the goal
Ibid.
Los Comandos Organizadores del Pueblo, May , MUPI archive, San Salvador, copy in
the authors possession.
IP address: 202.41.10.21
of training cadres who very gradually were to get involved in creating

a revolutionary organisation of a new kind.
Both this group and the COP organisers were heavily inuenced by the
European and Mexican student movement struggles. The former was also
characterised by its critical position on the Soviet Union and, in general,
its opposition to the strategy of communist parties. In early this
collective came into contact with a communist militant who had received
military training in Havana: Leonel Lemus Arvalo. At the August
meeting of the Organizacin Latinoamericana de Solidaridad (Latin American
Organisation of Solidarity, OLAS) held in Havana, there was a schism within
the ranks of the Salvadorean Communist Partys delegation; some held to a
pro-Moscow line, while others supported guerrilla struggle as a fundamental
revolutionary strategy. Roque Dalton and Domingo Mira belonged to this
latter group and, together with other communist militants, got commitment
to send Salvadorean communists to train in Cuba in order to set up a guerrilla
force in El Salvador. Lemus Arvalo was sent to Cuba, and on his return to
El Salvador in late was introduced to Francisco Jovel through former
UES rector Fabio Castillo, a friend of Jovels. Arvalo oered to give these
students military training as well as to connect them to El Grupos surviving
activists. This small grouping did not join the ERP; rather, Lemus Arvalo
simply committed to coordinating his actions with the ERP, which he began
to do in early .
Dissident communist youth
Survivors from El Grupo also contacted other high-school and undergraduate
student groups throughout . One of them was made up of students from
San Salvadors Jos Celestino Castro Workers Institute who were associated
with the Communist Party through membership in a cell of the latters
youth section, the Unin de Jvenes Patriotas (Union of Young Patriots,
UJP). Eduardo Sancho, who had been collaborating with this organisation
in the San Vicente department from the late s, was at rst one of the
key individuals linking these groups. The Celestino Castro Institute had been
established as a PCS initiative to create union organisers and recruit young
Interview with Francisco Jovel, former member of the FMLNs general command and
former secretary-general of the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores
Centroamericanos (Revolutionary Party of Central American Workers, PRTC), San
Salvador, Jan. .
See Alberto Martn lvarez, Del partido a la guerrilla: los orgenes de las Fuerzas Populares
de Liberacin Farabundo Mart (FPL), in Jorge Jurez vila (ed.), Historia y debates sobre el
conicto armado salvadoreo y sus secuelas (San Salvador: Fundacin Friedrich Ebert,
forthcoming).
IP address: 202.41.10.21
people, and most of its teaching sta were either Communist Party militants
or sympathisers:
The Celestino Castro was an institute created by the Unitary Federation of
Salvadorean Unions [FUSS] and other party institutions, by people from the
opposition, by ANDES leaders; I mean, the idea was to set up a workers institute all
the teaching sta were well known and well thought of, such as Cayetano Carpios
daughter, Mario Medrano, who was ANDES secretary-general, and many other
gures, such as Armando Herrera of the Communist Party.
Since the mid-s, various sectors within the PCS had been questioning
the partys strategy. The victory of the Cuban Revolution, the outlawing
of the PAR, and the repression of the workers and teachers strikes
had contributed to polarising the various stances within the organisation as to
whether it should still take part in elections. In this vein, a signicant sector of
the organisations young people began to demand that the PCS adopt armed
struggle as a priority strategy. A short time later the partys ambiguous position
with regard to the July El SalvadorHonduras war, which in practice
translated into support for Fidel Snchez Hernndezs military government,
was the last straw in this process of internal struggle. Thus, throughout
a stream of UJP militants left the PCS. Some of them joined the partys
former secretary-general, Salvador Cayetano Carpio, in the creation of the
FPL. Others, including students of the Celestino Castro Institute, the
Centro Nacional de Artes (National Centre of the Arts, CENAR) and
the National Institute General Francisco Menndez (INFRAMEN), as well as
some manual labourers, joined the ERP. This group included Dennis
Bismarck Julin Belloso, Jorge Melndez, Mario Vladimir Rogel, Jos Mario
Vigil and Armando Arteaga. They later drew in other secondary and
undergraduate student activists such as Sonia Aguiada Carranza, Lilian del
Carmen Letona (who recruited her sister Mercedes) and Arqumedes Antonio
Caadas. This collective had already undertaken some actions before formally
joining El Grupos survivors.
Internal Dynamics ()
As noted, when the ERP went public in , it was not yet a unied
organisation, but rather a sort of federation of small armed groups that acted
in coordination with each other. Both the COP and the student residence
Interview with Sonia Aguiada Carranza, former member of the ERPs political committee,
San Salvador, Aug. .
For a detailed narrative of this process, see Martn lvarez, Del partido a la guerrilla.
Notably, the members of the Frank Pas cell, which operated at the UES Faculty of Medicine.
By March , as Carlos Eduardo Rico Miras narrative conrms, the ERP had two
operational cells. One was made up of Gilberto Orellana, Leonel Lemus, Carlos Menjvar,
IP address: 202.41.10.21
group maintained separate structures, though they acted in conjunction. The

ERPs leadership was at that time made up of Edgar Alejandro Rivas Mira,
Eduardo Sancho and Lil Milagro Ramrez, while the COPs leaders were
Joaqun Villalobos, Rafael Arce Zablah and Jorge Gonzlez. Leonel Lemus and
Francisco Jovel were the leaders in their group.
Each entity had been organising its own support groups from the start a
structure of collaborators in charge of providing timely logistics, intelligence
and support with varying levels of success. While the COP does not seem
to have been very successful, according to the statements of some former
militants who stress how small the groups structure was by , other
groups had a greater capacity to rapidly pull together a wide network around
them. This seems to have happened with the student residence collective,
which, according to Francisco Jovel, had organised nearly people by late
.
The coming together of dierent leaderships and parallel structures in the
ERPs genesis immediately created organisational problems. The accidental
death in April of Leonel Lemus Arvalo, who was preparing an explosive
device in the company of other cell members, caused the group he was
coordinating (Carlos Rico Mira, Francisco Jovel, Armando Sibrin and
Manuel Angulo) to become disconnected from the ERP. The accident also
forced the ERP to reconstitute its structure in the summer of . A new
column was created, and Eduardo Sancho became responsible for its
leadership. Vladimir Rogel and Francisco Jovel became military and political
chief respectively, while Alfonso Hernndez was in charge of press and
propaganda. From late onwards, the rst divergences in political and
strategic approaches began to arise between the dierent leaderships
interacting within ERP. In the words of Francisco Jovel:
The ideological discussion there quickly became very dicult for me because
I really insisted that we had to sort out strategic issues, that it wasnt just a question
of operating blindly, and there was an enormous tendency, especially on the part of
Vladimir Rogel, to espouse a sort of hands-on approach that was militarist and not
very reexive. People also really looked down on those who were interested in the
theoretical and intellectual training of guerrillas.
It would seem that this emphasis on armed activities came from the younger
militants of the UJPs dissident group, who had less academic and political
Julia Rodrguez and Alfonso Hernndez, and the second one of Carlos Rico Mira, Francisco
Jovel, Armando Sibrin and Manuel Angulo. See Rico Mira, En silencio tena que ser, p. .
Interview with Ana Sonia Medina, San Salvador, Jan. .
Interview with Francisco Jovel, San Salvador, Jan. .
Gilberto Orellana and Carlos Menjvar also died.

Ibid.
IP address: 202.41.10.21
background. Sonia Aguiada stated in interview: Those who rst developed

a military structure were Vladimir, Melndez and Alejandro Montenegro;
they were the military chiefs.
As will be seen below, this sector was to later align itself with militants
from the COP, and with Alejandro Rivas Mira, in the May internal clash
which fractured the organisation. Throughout it became evident that
there were two distinct perspectives as to what the ERPs strategy should
be. One emphasised the need to create a revolutionary strategy in which
armed struggle should be a priority, but not the only one. This perspective
highlighted the need to build a revolutionary party that could oversee the
actions of both the guerrilla force and the grassroots movement, and also
create alliances with opposition political parties. The second point of view,
on the contrary, stemmed from a distrust of any type of party political
organisation, prioritised the creation of a military structure over any other
consideration, and saw armed actions in and of themselves as a means of
inciting the population to insurgency. These dierences were aggravated
throughout until they became untenable. This led to the rst rift in the
ERP, headed by Francisco Jovel and other militants from the student halls of
residence:
We wrote a letter saying our organising body was breaking o the alliance whose
purpose had been to unify us that although we had striven to nd some kind of
strategic convergence, we hadnt managed it, that we were sorry to see the ERP was on
the path of a militarist deviation, that that wasnt right, that we considered it necessary
to forge a revolutionary party, that it should head a military eort a mass eort
outside the law, that we werent in favour of investing our eorts into creating an
election-based party but that when the time came we would need to support it if the
need arose because that was a form of struggle that couldnt just be dismissed as
rubbish and that, because of all this, it was best that we held talks, and that we
hoped that in future we could end up creating something in common, a solid
revolutionary alliance.
Headed by Jovel, others such as Alfonso Hernndez (Arturo), Francisco

Napolen Montes (Carlos), Armando Sibrin (Oscar) and Carlos Rico Mira
(Pancho) left the ERP and started the preparations necessary for creating a new
organisation they called the Organizacin Revolucionaria de los Trabajadores
(Workers Revolutionary Organisation, ORT), which was the forerunner of the
Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores Centroamericanos (Revolutionary
The recently published testimony by Montenegro (Arqumedes Antonio Caadas alias)

certainly makes clear that at that time he was a militant with little political training and had
no signicant inuence or participation in the internal debates that were taking place.
Something similar can be said about Jorge Melndez. However, Vladimir Rogel was already
powerful in the ERP as chief operating ocer (military chief).
Interview with Sonia Aguiada Carranza, San Salvador, Aug. .
IP address: 202.41.10.21
Party of Central American Workers, PRTC), founded in . Although at the

time they did not know it (given the clandestine nature of their operations),
others in the ERP took a very similar stance and were starting to question the
organisations road map.
It seems likely that this internal discussion on strategy started around
late or early . As mentioned above, the changing national political
context, and in particular the February electoral fraud and the lack
of support for Colonel Benjamn Mejas coup, underscored the lack of
connection between the armed organisation and the population. Given that it
had no links to social organisations, the ERP had been unable to mobilise
people to rise up in support of a progressive coup that could have ousted the
military hardliners. This and the armed groups isolation were probably the
key elements that triggered soul-searching about strategy within the core of
the organisation.
The rst attempts at drawing up a strategy aimed at ensuring a strong
connection with grassroots organisations date back to late . By mid, the ERP leadership had drafted a document that stated its priorities to
be the structuring of the revolutionary vanguard and the encouragement of
grassroots resistance in order to start a revolutionary war. Such a war was to
be popular and prolonged and would have two main goals: to defeat the
military government, which was referred to as fascist, and to start the march
towards socialism. The vanguard party was to lead the inltration of ERP
underground militants into all sorts of social organisations, preferably unions,
taking on their collective demands and claims for basic freedoms, and
radicalising them by giving them a revolutionary vision. In the documents
notion of a prolonged popular war, very similar to the one developed by
Vietnams National Liberation Front, the urban guerrilla force was only the
rst phase in the creation of a rank-and-le army.
This strategy, however, coexisted with another approach that saw the
creation of military committees as a fundamental task during that period. It
was based on the premise that the conditions necessary for insurgency were
present in the population, and that the armed groups role was to provide the
spark to ignite it. To this end, giving organised groups of the population
military training was key. Likewise, believing that said insurgency was not far
o, it was thought necessary to seek the collaboration of military ocers,
From an analysis of the existing documents, it seems that from onwards the ERP
attempted to construct a political and military strategy that would allow the guerrilla group
to inltrate social organisations; however, this strategy does not appear to have been
thoroughly formulated until mid-.
The document was most likely drawn up by Eduardo Sancho, alias Esteban: Anteproyecto
del Planteamiento Estratgico del E.R.P, Aug. , MUPI archive, copy in the authors
possession.
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so that at the right time they would arm the masses and take part in a coup that
would overthrow the state and establish a new revolutionary government.
The rst, Vietnamese position was espoused by several prominent militants,
including Eduardo Sancho, Lil Milagro Ramrez, Armando Arteaga, Julia
Rodrguez and Ernesto Jovel Funes. Who exactly represented the second
position is not so evident based on the available information, but it seems clear
that they were among those who came from the PCS youth wing (Vladimir
Rogel, Jorge Melndez, Mario Vigil) and formed the military leadership of the
organisation one being Alejandro Rivas Mira, who ended up as commanderin-chief. There were probably additional strategic positions within the ERP
in those early years, although to date no evidence of such has been found.
Somehow, the resistance strategy was ocially adopted by the ERP without
there being any real consensus between all the factions on the desirability
of that strategy. The ERPs federative organisational make-up was clearly
responsible not only for the lack of in-depth debate on this issue within all its
sectors, but also for the fact that, to the contrary, this strategy was only
adopted by internal groupings as they saw t. So, the ERP began to recruit new
militants for the resistance apparatus throughout . It was organised as a
semi-clandestine organisation that would ensure a connection with the
grassroots movement and allow armed groups to propagate its revolutionary
strategy. To ensure the bond between the military structure and the mass
movement structures, some experienced militants were assigned to set up a
linking committee. Some of its members were Eduardo Sancho, Lil Milagro
Ramrez, Alfonso Hernndez, Armando Arteaga and Ernesto Jovel. A fair
number of the new militants came from the labour movement and, above all,
from the UES, which had undergone a military intervention and had been
shut down in July . ERP militants organised a structure named the
University Student Resistance (Resistencia Estudiantil Universitaria, REU),
which in turn built a legal organisation to operate openly, known as the Frente
Universitario Estudiantil Revolucionario Salvador Allende (Salvador Allende
University Student Revolutionary Front, FUERSA).
On a dierent front, by the heads of the ERP faction that identied
with the resistance strategy (this faction will hereinafter be referred to as the
Resistance), and which was made up mainly of members of the liaison unit,
Rico Mira, En silencio tena que ser, p. .

The ERPs leadership consisted from early of Edgar Alejandro Rivas Mira, Eduardo
Sancho, Vladimir Rogel, Jorge Alberto (Lito) Sandoval, Jorge Melndez, Mario Vigil and
Joaqun Villalobos. The latter was the last to join the leadership as part of the agreement
reached with the COP. This group represented, at least in theory, each of the sectors that
originally made up the ERP.
Interview with Marco Hernndez, former ERP member, San Salvador, April .
The Resistances ocial emergence is evidenced by the publication, from October
onwards, of Por la Causa Proletaria.
IP address: 202.41.10.21
was engaging in heavy criticism of the organisations leadership due to its

inability to develop a more holistic revolutionary strategy, as well as its refusal
to broaden the leadership structures and thus accommodate militants
from the popular movement. It was under these circumstances that Roque
Dalton returned to El Salvador and became a political adviser to the national
leadership. Dalton joined the ERP through a cell made up of militants from
the Resistance. Given his extensive political grounding, his entry translated
into an increase in this factions capacity for theoretical debate. In ,
the Resistance promoted the creation of the Frente de Accin Popular
Unicada (Unied Popular Action Front, FAPU) that would coordinate all
the grassroots organisations that the ERP had inltrated, as well as those
controlled by the FPL and PCS. In the eyes of the Resistance militants, the
Salvadorean military regime was in a process of escalating fascism, and in order
to defeat it, it was necessary to create a broad class alliance, represented by the
FAPU. Such an alliance would be formed, alongside the revolutionary forces,
by opposition political parties and the progressive sectors of the bourgeoisie
and the armed forces.
From late onwards, the main controversy within the ERP related
to the statement by its national leadership that the internal political context
guaranteed the conditions necessary for an insurrection. This context was
dened by the new electoral fraud that had taken place in the municipal and
legislative elections of March that year, and by the boom in popular
mobilisations promoted by the FAPU itself. The ERP was to prepare for the
coming insurgency by militarising all its structures and bringing all the activists
organised by the Resistance structure into military committees. This was not
accepted by the Resistance:
Those other elements of the ERP, they wanted to use all these eorts to transform
them into a military structure. We did not agree with this, because it meant sacricing
the masses, which was still a work in progress, and we were already convinced our
strategy was the right one. So, as this was creating friction what we saw was that this
was going to destroy our work. And accepting it meant relinquishing power. So that is
where it was discussed that the joint chiefs of sta were not ideologically sound,
so they had to be removed.
In February , the ERPs national leadership, dominated by the group that

was in favour of militarising the organisation, decided they should become the
Interview with Marco Hernndez, San Salvador, April .

Roque Dalton joined the ERP in early in Havana, through an agreement with Edgar
Alejandro Rivas Mira, and returned to El Salvador on December that year.
By late and early there was a rapprochement between the ERP and FPL that led
even to the publication of joint communiqus.
Sara Gordon, Crisis poltica y guerra en El Salvador (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, ).
Interview with Marco Hernndez, San Salvador, April .
IP address: 202.41.10.21
joint chiefs of sta, as part of the measures geared towards paving the way
for insurgency. This took place precisely at the time that the critical faction
namely, the Resistance was pushing to carry out an inquiry within the
organisations bases on the strategy that was to be followed. As a result,
the requirement that the structure be militarised prevented the holding of
widespread meetings with activists, and thus it was not possible to stage a
debate as had been planned.
Therefore, in the early months of the internal situation was one of
growing polarisation, with an arm that was increasingly connected to social
organisations, which guaranteed new recruits and a presence in the popular
movement, but was under-represented in the ERPs supreme leadership body.
Its only representative was Eduardo Sancho, who was controlled by those in
favour of militarising the Resistances semi-clandestine structures.
It was at this turning point that Armando Arteaga and Roque Dalton were
arrested on April on account of a small disciplinary oence.
Everything points to the ERPs joint chiefs of sta taking advantage of this
excuse to behead the organisations critical faction, by accusing Arteaga and
Dalton of insubordination and of attempting to sabotage the preparations for
the insurgency. In view of this situation, and the possibility that they might be
assassinated, the Resistance leadership held a meeting on May and decided
to leave the ERP and create a new organisation, the Fuerzas Armadas de la
Resistencia Nacional (Armed Forces of National Resistance, FARN). The
joint chiefs of sta reacted to this by sentencing the leaders of this movement
to death, among them Ernesto Jovel, Lil Milagro Ramrez and Eduardo
Sancho, and by attempting to hunt them down. After Arteaga and Dalton
were killed on May, FPL mediation put an end to what could have resulted
in mutual extermination.
Consequences
The consequences of the assassinations and the May rift were farreaching both for the ERP and for the revolutionary movement as a whole. For
the ERP, they signied the beginning of a period of isolation. Both the FPL
and the FARN stopped collaborating with this organisation for the rest of the
decade, until they were forced by circumstance to admit the ERP into the
edging FMLN in late .
A summary of these events was published in Por la Causa Proletaria, (MarchApril ),

featured in Por la causa proletaria, a compilation published by the Costa Rican Socialist Party
(San Salvador: CIDAI-UCA, undated), pp. , copy in the authors possession.
Eduardo Sancho has given an account of the deaths of Arteaga and Dalton: see Sancho,
Crnicas entre los espejos, pp. .
IP address: 202.41.10.21
Daltons assassination also signied the start of a phase of international

isolation for the ERP, given that the possibility of garnering Cuban support
had come to an end (albeit temporarily, as it later turned out). Without any
conclusive evidence, everything seems to point to the fact that Dalton, trusted
by the Cuban government, was placed as an ERP leadership adviser as part
of an agreement between Edgar Alejandro Rivas Mira and Havana, as a means
of securing Cuban support for the organisation. This also explains why, in
late , Rivas Mira and Vladimir Rogel attempted to establish ties with
the Chinese Communist Party with the aim of overcoming the international
isolation that the ERP had fallen into. In the end the Salvadorean
revolutionary movements disarray prevented it from receiving any meaningful
international aid until .
The rifts within the ERP were also responsible, to a certain extent, for the
splintering of the guerrilla-controlled grassroots movement. Since late
a weakened FAPU was under FARN control, while the FPL created its own
mass front in July of that year, called the Bloque Popular Revolucionario
(Revolutionary Popular Bloc, BPR). For its part, the ERP lost a great deal of its
connections to this movement because militants who controlled the
Resistance structure left, leaving the ERP isolated from the social organisations
that it had inuenced or controlled up until that time. This isolation was to a
certain extent overcome with the creation of the February Popular Leagues
in March .
In addition, the split in the ERP put o the group of progressive military
with whom the ERP had been establishing a relationship with the aim of
eventually working together towards an insurgency and a coup that would end
the military dictatorship. As mentioned above, this call to insurgency was to
take place throughout , but did not come about given the events of May
of that year.
After the crisis, the ERP found itself in a new critical situation in late
and early , around preparations for the Congress held to construct a
new partisan structure, the Partido de la Revolucin Salvadorea (Party of the
Salvadorean Revolution, PRS). The group that had come from the COP began
to manoeuvre to gain control in the organisation, taking up positions in the
new national leadership organised for the Congresss activities (May July
Michael E. Allison and Alberto Martn Alvarez, Unity and Disunity in the Frente
Farabundo Mart para la Liberacin Nacional, Latin American Politics and Society, :
(), pp. .
The FPLs conception of a mass front was distinctly dierent from that of the ERP and
FARN, and was also responsible for this division. On the other hand, ERP and FPL
opposition to the presence of political parties in the FAPU would also have accounted for
the latter leaving the group of PCS representatives in late .
See Sancho, Crnicas entre los espejos, p. .
IP address: 202.41.10.21
). At that point Vladimir Rogel, the ERPs chief operations ocer

(military chief) and a member of the joint chiefs of sta and the national
leadership, took a trip to China. Capitalising on his absence, the COP group
started moving against him, and his closest collaborators were removed
from positions of responsibility. Thus, Melesia or Mireya, a member of the
leadership loyal to Rogel, was suspended from militancy for a two-year period
starting in November . In December, Rogel and Rivas Mira were also
suspended from militancy and removed from leadership. By February ,
Rogel had been sentenced to death and executed, on charges of being
responsible for a militarist deviation in the organisation. As a result of
all this, the faction close to Rogel, the self-proclaimed Divergent Split, led
among others by Juan Jos Ynez and Melesia, left the organisation in early
. This critical sector also had strong disagreements with the leadership
in terms of the kind of party it was necessary to create, the correct method
of liaising with civil society organisations, and the analyses of Salvadorean
capitalism that were being expounded by the now dominant sector of the
organisation.
In June , Ynez and Melesia were captured by the security forces and
under torture gave away the location of several safe houses, which in turn
precipitated the July arrests of two leadership members: Ana Guadalupe
Martnez and Rodolfo Mariano Jimnez. This deepened the inner crisis that
the organisation was going through. In August, in the midst of this turmoil,
Direccin Poltica de la Escisin Divergente del ERP, Boletn informativo nmero ,

undated, Fabio Castillo Figueroas personal archive, San Salvador, copy in the authors
possession.
Melesia had joined the organisation through Eduardo Sancho, together with her sister Julia
Rodrguez (an alias), and was politically close to the core group that originally came from the
PCS youths. In she was also Vladimir Rogels romantic partner. Interview with Julia
Rodrguez, Mexico City, May .
See Prensa Comunista: publicacin especial, Oct. , MUPI archive, San Salvador, copy
in the authors possession.
According to a document published by the ERP in October , the death sentence was
enforced on account of the ERP being at war, as it was deemed that the conditions necessary
for an insurrection were present, and also on account of the risk that Rogel might head a
factional struggle that could put an end to the organisation. See Prensa Comunista:
publicacin especial, Oct. , MUPI archive, San Salvador, copy in the authors
possession.
Direccin Poltica de la Escisin Divergente del ERP, Otro vil asesinato de la burocracia
troskista del PRS-ERP, March , Fabio Castillo Figueroas personal archive, San
Salvador, copy in the authors possession.
Direccin Poltica de la Escisin Divergente del ERP, Boletn informativo nmero .
See Ana Guadalupe Martnez, Las crceles clandestinas (San Salvador: UCA, ), p. .
To all this must be added the September death of Rafael Arce Zablah, one of the
organisations main ideologues, in a confrontation in Villa de El Carmen (La Unin
department).
IP address: 202.41.10.21
Edgar Alejandro Rivas Mira was expelled from the ERP. The crisis came to an
end in July , when the sector that originally came from the COP took
denitive control of the organisation.
Conclusion
From to , the ERP operated as a coordinating structure made up of
several armed collectives, and not as a hierarchical and unied organisation.
Prior to joining the ERP, each of these collectives had created its own
leadership and support networks and had developed distinctive ideological and
strategic nuances. After the ERP was created, the clandestine conditions under
which its militants operated, which required secrecy and militarised structures
that favoured obedience over questioning the leadership, made it impossible to
open up a broad debate that would lead to a consensual strategy and political
line. The case of the ERP and also of the FPL, which went through a similar
rift in demonstrates how being forced underground facilitates internal
disagreement and splits and prevents internal coherence in armed organisations. As is evidenced in the case of the ERP, the creation of revolutionary
Left armed organisations was often the result of deluge processes that is,
organisations came together from dierent collectives and were united only by
the desire to implement a strategy (armed struggle), were based on a certain
ideological identication (a current of Marxist thought), and worked together
around a vague goal of constructing a socialist project.
The organisational arrangements adopted in these rst phases by the
Salvadorean guerrillas were later substituted by broader ones that were similar
to those of the classic communist parties; this was the case both with the ERP
and the creation of the PRS in , and with the FPL in , when the
Congress was created. This was done in response to the growth of armed
organisations and in light of the need to incorporate prominent activists
who came from the social movement and who also demanded a place in the
decision-making bodies. The case analysed here shows that these changes at
a structural level contribute to producing internal crises due to the opposition
of the organisations dominant groups to the opening up and expansion of
decision-making mechanisms. In this sense, the tension produced in the ERP
by the growth of the organisation is also present in the events and rifts of
and described above. All of this suggests that the inuence of internal
organisational changes, and in particular the expansion of decision-making
This group consisted of Joaqun Villalobos, Ana Guadalupe Martnez, Ana Sonia Medina,
the Letona sisters, Juan Ramn Medrano, Claudio Armijo, Jorge Melndez and Jorge
Gonzlez, together with others such as Dennis Bismarck Julin and Arqumedes Antonio
Caadas.
IP address: 202.41.10.21
structures, is still uncharted territory which warrants more intensive

research.
As has been discussed, in the case of the ERP the adoption of a federal
organisational scheme in which the leadership was made up of representatives
of its dierent factions made it impossible to impose a strategic vision
approved by the organisation as a whole. The lack of agreement around the
revolutionary strategy, the role of the party and the role of armed struggle
versus other modalities of political dispute brought about severe internal
dierences that were addressed through the various rifts that took place
throughout the period under analysis. After late these dierences turned
into a power struggle between two main factions, which was settled in
May with the breaking away of an important contingent of militants.
This rupture signied for the ERP the loss of key organisational resources, a
disconnection from the social movements, an ending of the rapprochement
with the other edging leftist armed organisation (the FPL), and the
organisations international isolation. Given all the above, this conict
contributed to undermining the legitimacy of the organisations leadership,
in particular that of Edgar Alejandro Rivas Mira, against a collective (the
militants who came from the COP) that showed considerable internal
cohesion and the manoeuvring capacity to remove him from power. The
expulsion of the faction that argued for privileging the development of armed
activities in , and the creation of the PRS-ERP, marked the ending of the
organisations formative years.
It is also important to mention that the genesis of the ERP shows what a
key role certain events of the international context played in the development
of the revolutionary Left in Latin America. As is well known, the Cuban
Revolution produced a change in the cultural repertoire of collective action in
Latin America by providing a credible alternative for social transformation and
radical policy characterised by the use of armed struggle as a fundamental
strategy, and socialism as an alternative form of social organisation. Likewise,
Cuba greatly contributed to the creation of organisations in the rst phase of
the Latin American guerrilla wave in the early s (the foquista groups)
through nancial support and training. While the inuence of Cuba on the
Latin American revolutionary Left has been well explored by numerous
scholars, the inuence of other international events has barely been
researched. The Salvadorean case shows that the wave of student mobilisations
For a rst attempt to develop this line of research, see Alberto Martn lvarez, De
movimiento de liberacin a partido politico: articulacin de los nes organizativos en el
FMLN salvadoreo (), PhD diss., Universidad Complutense de Madrid, .
See, for instance, Wickham-Crowley, Guerrillas and Revolution in Latin America; Jorge G.
Castaeda, La utopa desarmada: intrigas, dilemas y promesa de la izquierda en Amrica
Latina (Barcelona: Ariel, ); and Tanya Harmer, Two, Three, Many Revolutions? Cuba
IP address: 202.41.10.21
of the late s in Europe and Mexico, as well as the protests against the
Vietnam War, also contributed to the development of a revolutionary political
culture within a sector of the Latin American students who, in fact, shared in
good measure the same cultural and ideological references as their peers across
the Atlantic.
Beyond the events of El Salvador, this work points to the importance
of researching the inuence of these other international events on the
development of the second phase of the guerrilla wave in Latin America,
which began in the early s. Thus, this case study suggests the importance
of analysing the transnational connections, symbolic and cultural in the rst
instance, but also nancial and material, to better explain the emergence of the
organisations of the new revolutionary Left both in Latin America and in
Europe, which, despite their dierences, can be included in the same wave of
activity as the worldwide New Left. Likewise, the close connection between
workers mobilisations, the student movement and the emergence of the
guerrilla movement in El Salvador points to the importance of studying the
creation of revolutionary Left armed groups in the continent alongside an
analysis of the various protest waves that took place at a domestic level within
each country. All of the above is to argue that research on the genesis and
internal dynamics of the Salvadorean guerrilla movement has enormous
potential to broaden the available knowledge on the emergence, development
and demise of new revolutionary Left organisations at a global level.
Spanish and Portuguese abstracts
Spanish abstract. A travs del uso de entrevistas con antiguos militantes y documentos
internos inditos, el artculo reconstruye la gnesis y la dinmica interna del Ejrcito
Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP) de El Salvador durante sus primeros aos de
existencia (). Este periodo estuvo marcado por la incapacidad del ERP para
mantener cohesin interna o un acuerdo sobre la estrategia revolucionaria, lo que se
tradujo a su vez en una serie de cismas y luchas internas por el control de la
organizacin. La evidencia aportada por este caso de estudio, arroja nueva luz sobre los
orgenes de las organizaciones de la izquierda armada salvadorea y contribuye
and the Prospects for Revolutionary Change in Latin America, , Journal of Latin
American Studies, : (), pp. .
Albeit with important nuances of their own, such as the key inuence of liberation theology
and the debates inside the Christian Left.
Alberto Martn lvarez and Eduardo Rey Tristn, La oleada revolucionaria latinoamericana
contempornea, : denicin, caracterizacin y algunas claves para su anlisis,
Naveg@mrica: Revista Electrnica de la Asociacin Espaola de Americanistas, (),
available at http://revistas.um.es/navegamerica/article/viewFile// (last
checked in July ).
Alberto Martn lvarez and Eduardo Rey Tristn, La oleada revolucionaria.
IP address: 202.41.10.21

asimismo a ampliar el conocimiento disponible sobre los procesos de formacin y la
dinmica interna de los grupos armados de izquierda surgidos desde los aos sesenta en
Amrica Latina.
Spanish keywords: violencia poltica, El Salvador, revolucin, grupos armados, ERP,
FMLN
Portuguese abstract. Atravs de entrevistas com antigos militantes e documentos at

ento no publicados, este artigo traa a gnese e dinmicas internas do Exrcito
Revolucionrio do Povo (ERP) durante os primeiros anos de sua existncia ()
em El Salvador. Este perodo foi marcado pela inabilidade do ERP em manter uma
coerncia interna ou qualquer consenso em relao estratgia revolucionria, levando
a uma srie de divises e disputas internas pelo controle da organizao. As evidncias
apresentadas neste estudo de caso oferecem uma nova perspectiva sobre as origens da
esquerda armada salvadorenha, contribuindo assim para um entendimento ampliado
dos processos de formao e dinmicas internas de grupos armados de esquerda que
emergiram a partir dos anos na Amrica Latina.
Portuguese keywords: violncia poltica, El Salvador, insurgncia, grupos armados,
ERP, FMLN
IP address: 202.41.10.21

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The Genesis and Internal Dynamics of El

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0022216X14001084

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J. Lat. Amer. Stud. , Cambridge University Press

The Genesis and Internal Dynamics of

Abstract. Using interviews with former militants and previously unpublished

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Alberto Martn lvarez and Eudald Cortina Orero

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The Genesis and Internal Dynamics of El Salvadors ERP

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of the electoral opposition embodied in the Partido Demcrata Cristiano

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public employee unions, such as the Asociacin Nacional de Educadores

Webre, Jos Napolen Duarte, p. .

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young Salvadorean social Christian leaders to the latest trends in Catholic

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students of Christian orientation, such as the banning of the unionisation of

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young university students who were activists in student organisations linked

Interview with anonymous informant, Mexico City, April .

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Alberto Martn lvarez and Eudald Cortina Orero

The rest of El Grupos rst members or collaborators were Christian

Interview with Eduardo Sancho, Jan. .

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termed the Comandos Organizadores del Pueblo (Peoples Organising

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Interview with Rafael Velsquez, San Salvador, Oct. .

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[Alejandro Rivas Miras] supposedly militarist position shifted, and

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of training cadres who very gradually were to get involved in creating

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group maintained separate structures, though they acted in conjunction. The

Interview with Francisco Jovel, San Salvador, Jan. .

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background. Sonia Aguiada stated in interview: Those who rst developed

Headed by Jovel, others such as Alfonso Hernndez (Arturo), Francisco

The recently published testimony by Montenegro (Arqumedes Antonio Caadas alias)

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Party of Central American Workers, PRTC), founded in . Although at the

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Rico Mira, En silencio tena que ser, p. .